Recently, a press release by Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta said her travels to Niue and Tonga were “to engage kanohi ki te kanohi with counterparts”.
As a wag on the Point of Order blog noted: “We imagine this is a legal form of behaviour among consenting adults and look forward to the television coverage.”
I had long assumed inserting such untranslated phrases was a clumsy attempt to teach more people basic Māori vocabulary — but I have been told very firmly by a te reo revitalisation expert that I am mistaken. The aim is not acquisition of the language, he said, but rather encouraging correct pronunciation (when it is spoken) and elevating the status of te reo (presumably in part to kindle interest in learning it).
That news came as a relief because I can’t imagine that many will have learned anything other than a handful of Māori words even after repeated listening to RNZ, watching TVNZ or reading articles on Stuff.
Certainly, in my case, I have probably added no more than 25 words to my Māori vocabulary in the past five years from listening to and reading media reports and official documents.
I now know what mahi (work), whenua (land), mātauranga (knowledge), mauri (life force), rohe (territory) and a few other words mean but that is not much of a return on the amount of te reo I have been exposed to through news media, public signage, government Covid advertising and press releases — and even, to my surprise, via extended service announcements on Auckland’s ferries.
I understood more words five years ago when I made an attempt to learn some Māori grammar and vocabulary but they mostly disappeared from my memory within months after I had given up. Part of the reason for my lack of grit in pursuing te reo is that I know just how hard it is to learn a second, third or fourth language with any degree of proficiency. And just how hard it is to maintain it — unless you find yourself immersed in the language or are willing to devote much of your spare time to studying it.
People learn languages for a variety of reasons — sometimes as a necessity for business; or because they have moved to a new country; or because they want to be better equipped for travel and communicating with locals.
More uncommonly, they may be deeply attracted to another culture — including that of Ancient Greece and Rome as the basis of much of Western culture — and want to study its literature, philosophy and history in its original language.
Occasionally, people have imagined that a foreign power will soon dominate the world — militarily, financially or culturally — and it would be an advantage to speak their tongue. I have known people who studied Russian in the 1970s and Japanese in the 1980s for that reason. Possibly Mandarin falls into that category today.
Very few, however, in my experience learn another language — or even how to pronounce words correctly — out of a sense of duty or because they are told it will be good for them. Or that it will fulfil some ill-defined “Treaty obligation”. Yet that seems to be at least the subtext of the government’s push for te reo.
The use of random untranslated te reo words and phrases feels very much like a headmaster at an old-fashioned boarding school shouting at truculent pupils marshalling spinach disconsolately around their plates: “You will eat your greens because they are good for you! And you will enjoy them!”
I think it is this paternalistic, Papa-knows-best approach that most riles people. The unfortunate fact for the government and its language commissars is that in the internet age no nation’s media outlets have a monopoly on an audience’s attention — apart from in countries such as North Korea and China.
In a world awash with options for news and entertainment in English streaming in from countries around the world, the decision to persevere with inserting Māori words to form a hybrid tongue — dubbed “Manglish” or “Maoglish” by critics — seems frankly bizarre.
Advocates of language revitalisation insist that a few phrases here and there are inconsequential and audiences should be gracious and accepting of them but few sane entertainment or news organisations would ever dream of doing that.
I was Metro magazine’s film critic for nearly 20 years, and among the more than 400 films I reviewed in that time — a good proportion of them art-house films with subtitles — I can’t recall any instances of foreign phrases that were not translated with subtitles for an English-speaking audience.
Dominican-American novelist Junot Diaz annoyed many of the readers of his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by inserting phrases and sentences in Spanish without translation. He explained to Slate magazine: “I want people to research, to ask each other, to question. But also I want there to be an element of incomprehension.”
He added: “Isn’t it about time that folks started getting used to the fact that the United States comprises large Spanish-speaking segments?”
However, Diaz’s inclusion of Spanish without a translation seemed to many readers to be the epitome of arrogance — just as using te reo in English news does to many New Zealanders who don’t expect or welcome an “element of incomprehension”, however minor, inserted untranslated into media reports or official documents.
Parts of our media seem to think it is a good idea but I have found that such advocates have no response when asked whether they would think it would be an equally good idea to have even brief bursts of sign language used without an accompanying English translation in a television broadcast.
Yet, sign language was made an official language by the New Zealand Sign Language Act 2006. It has been estimated that more than 23,000 people in New Zealand have some knowledge of NZSL.
Energetic interpreters busily translated the entire 1pm addresses by the Prime Minister and Dr Ashley Bloomfield day after day during the lengthy “elimination” phase of Covid, but few — apart from the hearing impaired — will have taken any interest. It’s a vital service for the deaf, but of little interest to anyone else.
Is it really a case of disrespecting the deaf to take no interest in sign language? If it isn’t, it’s very difficult to argue that taking no interest in te reo constitutes disrespecting Māori either.
Inserting untranslated words — no matter whether in sign language or te reo — is certainly not a winning strategy for any enterprise, in print or broadcast, that wants to keep its audience.
It is said that one reason RNZ’s Morning Report has been shucking off listeners rapidly over the past few years is because of its regular insertion of Māori words and phrases into broadcasts. Insiders say management knows this is a problem but staffers are rarely brave enough to say so aloud.
Certainly, you’d have to say a business model that incorporates the slogan “Giving people more of what they don’t want!” is plainly suicidal.
A rule in mass-market journalism has long been to prefer simple words that any audience will understand. In fact the NZ Herald used to boast that its vocabulary could be understood by a 12-year-old.
Newspaper subeditors would routinely replace multisyllabic words in copy with simpler, blunter ones. For example, light would always be preferred to illumination, speed to velocity, and burn to incinerate.
What has changed so dramatically that it is suddenly acceptable to use even a smattering of words that 95 per cent or more of the audience won’t understand?
Columnists for newspapers such as the UK’s Daily Telegraph will occasionally insert Latin phrases that aren’t translated (such as “ne plus ultra” and “sine qua non”) but a lot of their older readers can still probably remember enough school Latin to understand them.
In the Telegraph’s case, the use of such phrases is often seen as a social marker — that is to say, snobbery — and some view untranslated te reo in the same light.
Expat foreigners have told me they find the mixing of two languages in New Zealand’s media very odd.
Irish friends living in Auckland say they quite like the practice — but find it strange nevertheless. “So we live in Tāmaki Makaurau, right?” one asked me recently, with a grin, after watching the weather bulletin on 1News.
They say Irish and English are never mixed that way in Ireland in public broadcast media — even though learning Irish at school is compulsory from the start of primary school at the age of six until 16.
If the use of intermittent te reo is intended to raise its status — and to interest many more people in studying it — it’s moot whether, on balance, it has been a wild success. Despite reports of waiting lists for te reo courses, it is quite possible its net effect has been to diminish its standing overall given the numbers of those annoyed by it.
It is significant that the current Labour government hasn’t made teaching Māori compulsory in schools — and a comparison with the compulsory teaching of Irish in Ireland’s schools provides an obvious reason.
Ireland’s population is over 82 per cent White Irish. Consequently, the vast majority of schoolchildren in Ireland are learning the language of their own ancestors.
Even then its compulsory nature is contentious, with critics saying modern languages should replace it and deriding it as a forced and fake way of manufacturing a national identity that often has the reverse effect.
The case for compulsory te reo is much weaker, of course, given Maori is the language of the ancestors of only 17 per cent of New Zealanders.
Associate Minister of Education Kelvin Davis recognised this danger in July: “If we were to compel people [to learn at school], we would have a backlash, and it might have the opposite effect.”
The debate over the viability of te reo has to be viewed in light of the brutal fact that minority languages are facing “digital extinction” everywhere as English expands its reach worldwide through the internet.
No doubt for that reason, surveys have shown most New Zealanders are happy for te reo to be supported via dedicated outlets such as Whakaata Māori (formerly Māori Television) — even at considerable cost to the taxpayer — so anyone who wants to hear the language spoken can enjoy it and learn it there.
Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that Willie Jackson, the Minister for Māori Development and a former broadcaster himself, admitted last year that Māori TV’s audience was “minimal” and attributed that to a lack of good programming — in English.
“In the past it has all been about the language [te reo], a huge focus on the language, but we need our own news in English and we need our own programmes in English,” Jackson said.
“It’s not so much about the language, it’s about the stories. Most of our people don’t speak te reo and we shouldn’t do it at the expense of our people.”
The fact that the vast majority of Māori don’t speak their ancestral language, and most are not inclined to learn, is one reason many non-Māori dislike finding te reo in mass media and official documents — and why they resent being called dinosaurs and racists for saying so.
It is true, however, that if New Zealand doesn’t preserve the Māori language, who else will? But the question remains whether the current policy of peppering media reports and official documents with te reo is the best way to go about it.
An item featuring Tūhoe activist Tama Iti on TVNZ’s 1News last week showed how the language can be used in a way that respects the fact the vast majority of New Zealanders don’t speak or understand Māori while giving it ample airtime.
When Iti spoke in Māori about his new art exhibition in Wellington “I Will Not Speak Māori”, it was subtitled in English — including even a few sentences when he was speaking predominantly in English but used a handful of words in te reo as well.
The format made it easy to pair words in Māori with their English equivalents.
No reasonable person could find that objectionable — except perhaps language revivalists who arrogantly assume words in te reo should never be translated no matter how few of their compatriots understand them.
That news came as a relief because I can’t imagine that many will have learned anything other than a handful of Māori words even after repeated listening to RNZ, watching TVNZ or reading articles on Stuff.
Certainly, in my case, I have probably added no more than 25 words to my Māori vocabulary in the past five years from listening to and reading media reports and official documents.
I now know what mahi (work), whenua (land), mātauranga (knowledge), mauri (life force), rohe (territory) and a few other words mean but that is not much of a return on the amount of te reo I have been exposed to through news media, public signage, government Covid advertising and press releases — and even, to my surprise, via extended service announcements on Auckland’s ferries.
I understood more words five years ago when I made an attempt to learn some Māori grammar and vocabulary but they mostly disappeared from my memory within months after I had given up. Part of the reason for my lack of grit in pursuing te reo is that I know just how hard it is to learn a second, third or fourth language with any degree of proficiency. And just how hard it is to maintain it — unless you find yourself immersed in the language or are willing to devote much of your spare time to studying it.
People learn languages for a variety of reasons — sometimes as a necessity for business; or because they have moved to a new country; or because they want to be better equipped for travel and communicating with locals.
More uncommonly, they may be deeply attracted to another culture — including that of Ancient Greece and Rome as the basis of much of Western culture — and want to study its literature, philosophy and history in its original language.
Occasionally, people have imagined that a foreign power will soon dominate the world — militarily, financially or culturally — and it would be an advantage to speak their tongue. I have known people who studied Russian in the 1970s and Japanese in the 1980s for that reason. Possibly Mandarin falls into that category today.
Very few, however, in my experience learn another language — or even how to pronounce words correctly — out of a sense of duty or because they are told it will be good for them. Or that it will fulfil some ill-defined “Treaty obligation”. Yet that seems to be at least the subtext of the government’s push for te reo.
The use of random untranslated te reo words and phrases feels very much like a headmaster at an old-fashioned boarding school shouting at truculent pupils marshalling spinach disconsolately around their plates: “You will eat your greens because they are good for you! And you will enjoy them!”
I think it is this paternalistic, Papa-knows-best approach that most riles people. The unfortunate fact for the government and its language commissars is that in the internet age no nation’s media outlets have a monopoly on an audience’s attention — apart from in countries such as North Korea and China.
In a world awash with options for news and entertainment in English streaming in from countries around the world, the decision to persevere with inserting Māori words to form a hybrid tongue — dubbed “Manglish” or “Maoglish” by critics — seems frankly bizarre.
Advocates of language revitalisation insist that a few phrases here and there are inconsequential and audiences should be gracious and accepting of them but few sane entertainment or news organisations would ever dream of doing that.
I was Metro magazine’s film critic for nearly 20 years, and among the more than 400 films I reviewed in that time — a good proportion of them art-house films with subtitles — I can’t recall any instances of foreign phrases that were not translated with subtitles for an English-speaking audience.
Dominican-American novelist Junot Diaz annoyed many of the readers of his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by inserting phrases and sentences in Spanish without translation. He explained to Slate magazine: “I want people to research, to ask each other, to question. But also I want there to be an element of incomprehension.”
He added: “Isn’t it about time that folks started getting used to the fact that the United States comprises large Spanish-speaking segments?”
However, Diaz’s inclusion of Spanish without a translation seemed to many readers to be the epitome of arrogance — just as using te reo in English news does to many New Zealanders who don’t expect or welcome an “element of incomprehension”, however minor, inserted untranslated into media reports or official documents.
Parts of our media seem to think it is a good idea but I have found that such advocates have no response when asked whether they would think it would be an equally good idea to have even brief bursts of sign language used without an accompanying English translation in a television broadcast.
Yet, sign language was made an official language by the New Zealand Sign Language Act 2006. It has been estimated that more than 23,000 people in New Zealand have some knowledge of NZSL.
Energetic interpreters busily translated the entire 1pm addresses by the Prime Minister and Dr Ashley Bloomfield day after day during the lengthy “elimination” phase of Covid, but few — apart from the hearing impaired — will have taken any interest. It’s a vital service for the deaf, but of little interest to anyone else.
Is it really a case of disrespecting the deaf to take no interest in sign language? If it isn’t, it’s very difficult to argue that taking no interest in te reo constitutes disrespecting Māori either.
Inserting untranslated words — no matter whether in sign language or te reo — is certainly not a winning strategy for any enterprise, in print or broadcast, that wants to keep its audience.
It is said that one reason RNZ’s Morning Report has been shucking off listeners rapidly over the past few years is because of its regular insertion of Māori words and phrases into broadcasts. Insiders say management knows this is a problem but staffers are rarely brave enough to say so aloud.
Certainly, you’d have to say a business model that incorporates the slogan “Giving people more of what they don’t want!” is plainly suicidal.
A rule in mass-market journalism has long been to prefer simple words that any audience will understand. In fact the NZ Herald used to boast that its vocabulary could be understood by a 12-year-old.
Newspaper subeditors would routinely replace multisyllabic words in copy with simpler, blunter ones. For example, light would always be preferred to illumination, speed to velocity, and burn to incinerate.
What has changed so dramatically that it is suddenly acceptable to use even a smattering of words that 95 per cent or more of the audience won’t understand?
Columnists for newspapers such as the UK’s Daily Telegraph will occasionally insert Latin phrases that aren’t translated (such as “ne plus ultra” and “sine qua non”) but a lot of their older readers can still probably remember enough school Latin to understand them.
In the Telegraph’s case, the use of such phrases is often seen as a social marker — that is to say, snobbery — and some view untranslated te reo in the same light.
Expat foreigners have told me they find the mixing of two languages in New Zealand’s media very odd.
Irish friends living in Auckland say they quite like the practice — but find it strange nevertheless. “So we live in Tāmaki Makaurau, right?” one asked me recently, with a grin, after watching the weather bulletin on 1News.
They say Irish and English are never mixed that way in Ireland in public broadcast media — even though learning Irish at school is compulsory from the start of primary school at the age of six until 16.
If the use of intermittent te reo is intended to raise its status — and to interest many more people in studying it — it’s moot whether, on balance, it has been a wild success. Despite reports of waiting lists for te reo courses, it is quite possible its net effect has been to diminish its standing overall given the numbers of those annoyed by it.
It is significant that the current Labour government hasn’t made teaching Māori compulsory in schools — and a comparison with the compulsory teaching of Irish in Ireland’s schools provides an obvious reason.
Ireland’s population is over 82 per cent White Irish. Consequently, the vast majority of schoolchildren in Ireland are learning the language of their own ancestors.
Even then its compulsory nature is contentious, with critics saying modern languages should replace it and deriding it as a forced and fake way of manufacturing a national identity that often has the reverse effect.
The case for compulsory te reo is much weaker, of course, given Maori is the language of the ancestors of only 17 per cent of New Zealanders.
Associate Minister of Education Kelvin Davis recognised this danger in July: “If we were to compel people [to learn at school], we would have a backlash, and it might have the opposite effect.”
The debate over the viability of te reo has to be viewed in light of the brutal fact that minority languages are facing “digital extinction” everywhere as English expands its reach worldwide through the internet.
No doubt for that reason, surveys have shown most New Zealanders are happy for te reo to be supported via dedicated outlets such as Whakaata Māori (formerly Māori Television) — even at considerable cost to the taxpayer — so anyone who wants to hear the language spoken can enjoy it and learn it there.
Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that Willie Jackson, the Minister for Māori Development and a former broadcaster himself, admitted last year that Māori TV’s audience was “minimal” and attributed that to a lack of good programming — in English.
“In the past it has all been about the language [te reo], a huge focus on the language, but we need our own news in English and we need our own programmes in English,” Jackson said.
“It’s not so much about the language, it’s about the stories. Most of our people don’t speak te reo and we shouldn’t do it at the expense of our people.”
The fact that the vast majority of Māori don’t speak their ancestral language, and most are not inclined to learn, is one reason many non-Māori dislike finding te reo in mass media and official documents — and why they resent being called dinosaurs and racists for saying so.
It is true, however, that if New Zealand doesn’t preserve the Māori language, who else will? But the question remains whether the current policy of peppering media reports and official documents with te reo is the best way to go about it.
An item featuring Tūhoe activist Tama Iti on TVNZ’s 1News last week showed how the language can be used in a way that respects the fact the vast majority of New Zealanders don’t speak or understand Māori while giving it ample airtime.
When Iti spoke in Māori about his new art exhibition in Wellington “I Will Not Speak Māori”, it was subtitled in English — including even a few sentences when he was speaking predominantly in English but used a handful of words in te reo as well.
The format made it easy to pair words in Māori with their English equivalents.
No reasonable person could find that objectionable — except perhaps language revivalists who arrogantly assume words in te reo should never be translated no matter how few of their compatriots understand them.
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
13 comments:
Mr Adams, you are far too generous in your appraisal.
You and I both know the 'resurgence' is caused by the PJIF criteria for MSM set in stone by the Labour caucus heavy with Maori elite to use the language as a bridge to envelope around co-governance as all things Maori are apparently 'good' for all New Zealanders.
But be not mistaken, it is better, much better for the elite Maori in their entirety than it is for the man on the street be he Maori or not. As the elite are the ones in control of the coins, where they are spent and with whom.
It is a form of linguistic eugenics to go with the political eugenics we are seeing occuring in New Zealand as the names across the country are changed, the names of public and government services, the name of public amenities and even the name of the country as well. All without public discourse.
All this leads to a demonstrable take-over using the so called 'obligations' to the TOW and the lionisation of Maoridom and all things Maori (without of course appropriating it because that is, I am told by the MSM, bad).
To say that the reason to intersect Maori and English in spoken word is to have the aim of not acquisition but to encourage correct pronunciation, is a total smoke screen.
One cannot learn to pronounce a word correctly without first learning the root of the word and its context as any language teacher would tell you. Te reo Maori, with its majority words made up since 1840 to fit modern context is no different.
When a minority citizenry thinks they can, as first colonisers have a larger seat at the table in a liberal democracy and literally force aquisition of speech with agenda that doesn't go un-noticed at the same time as dismissing all the things that the others who came just 300 years later brought to that table (including DNA) then clearly a conflict of ideology, politics and culture raises its ugly head.
As you state, reasonable New Zealanders are happy to support Te Reo Maori through media like Maori TV etc and embrace as much as they can as it is part of what makes New Zealand, New Zealand. It is not comforting when however after multi-millions of tax payer funding in language development sees so little change in uptake from Maori themselves.
It is diabolical when a vocal Minister states that the fact that Maori TV is little watched because it has lack of good programming in English sending a clear message that the uptake of Te Reo has after all these decades has limited utility.
This is not a policy that encourages embracement it is a policy that divides New Zealand into camps. But then this Labour government has divided New Zealanders into many camps in the last 5 years, as sad as that is.
Kia ora e hoa (Hi Bro) Kua patua e koe te titi e runga i te upoko (you’ve hit the nail on the head) !
You are right. It us so weird having a new pidgin english/maori language where words from both languages are spoken in the same sentence. Which other countries do this? I have bi-lingual friends who either speak one language or the other. They do not combine the two. It is super weird. Let people who want to learn maori learn it. Just stop inventing a new language.
Assuming not trace maori and angling for a cushy job in one of the giant maori corporations, or maori run state organisations, or as a consultant/adviser to some Council, committee etc then must still learn some te reo to have a chance in teaching, nursing, Police, tertiary education etc And now for even most significant private firms need to learn a smattering of te lingo and consistently feign interest. It is preposterous that a country not noted for efficiency should fritter so much time and otherwise productive effort on a stone age hobby language.
I became quite interested in this issue 25-30 years ago and reached identical conclusions, including the failure of compulsory Irish, from teaching in a school where Maori language was taught either as an immersion language for volunteers or as a compulsory subject for other students. It was noticeable that the compulsory students, mostly of Pacific and Asian origin, vigorously objected to learning Maori - not my language/don’t need it/ rather learn something else - though they were quite respectful towards other cultures and bilingual competence. When I checked for two years my subjective impressions against the retention rate going from compulsory Form 3 Maori classes to optional Form 4 Maori, I discovered a 99% drop out rate for the compulsory students.
Several weeks ago I searched the internet for Irish language statistics and found that despite 90 years of coercion and inducement aimed at making it the preferred national language of Ireland, only 40% claim to speak the language; just 10% use it on a weekly or daily basis outside education; 4% use it on a daily basis outside education, and only 2% use it as the main family language. How unsuccessful for how long can a policy be before it’s supporters will acknowledge the futility of flogging a dead horse.
Later, teaching English overseas in a territory where it was an official language, compulsory subject, important in parts of the economy, but not the mother tongue of any of my students, left me doubting the value of coerced second language learning, such was the student failure rate.
One disagreement - is there any point in preserving languages? More than 20 years ago Kenan Malik wrote an essay, Let Them Die, against the artificial preservation of languages. You can read it here:
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/letthemdie
davelenny
Maori language is being used as a Trojan horse for maori infiltration and control of everything.
Graham makes a series of telling points about the Maori language push which is progressing silently in the print media but very loudly in TV and radio. About 18 months ago I complained to the NZ Herald and to the Media Council over an NZ Herald article which to me carried an excess of Maori language “flourishes” and “untranslatable distractions”. I noted also that the article detailed the tribal affiliations of a well-known Maori, who has since passed on. Was the tribal affiliations quote to be regarded as some sort of honorific available only to Maori?
NZ Herald replied with a number of utterly dismissive points including one which I read as personally insulting. The Media Council as expected trotted out their usual “boilerplate” reply – editorial discretion applies in all cases etc etc blah blah. One of their gems was:
[ It is hard to sustain any argument that they are "unnecessary Maori flourishes" or to describe them as "untranslatable distractions and therefore irrelevant" when their meanings are widely understood or readily discoverable.]
My point here is of course that the words in general are simply not widely understood, if at all. As to the matter of discoverable meanings I would ask who carries an English/Maori dictionary at all times. Have you ever seen anyone on a bus or train reading the newspaper and then referring to a dictionary?
I taught for many years at a total immersion Maori school. When we wrote reports or school documents, we were allowed to choose between writing them in Maori or English, according to our judgement on which was most helpful in the circumstance.
But it was strictly forbidden to mix languages in a sentence; it was seen as unprofessional and disrespectful to both. I often think of this when I hear or see the growing use of pidgin today. Not all Maori approve!
Where is your sense of fun? We have non-stop giggles in the Hutt Valley with labels painted on rubbish tins(rapihi), Newspaper stands (nupepa) and car yards (motoka.) Surely the "language" is not meant to be taken seriously.
Living in rural NZ with a low population of Māori - those Māori children who did attend our primary school in the 40/50's firstly had parents who did not encourage speaking Māori. They were far keener to have their children advantaged by speaking English.
I do not believe that to be any different today. We still end up choosing our pathway, and Māori can and do follow the cultural pathways of their choosing.
One thing I know is you don't learn a different language in the classroom or by watching TV - so stop wasting our time and the millions of taxpayer funds, we don't have.
While the digital media may be a reason for a decline in the use of the Maori language, it will also be it's saviour. A language is only lost when it cannot be read, pronounced and translated into another current language. Digital media will ensure that this cannot happen.
29th June 1876 a petition by Witi Te Hakiro and 336 others was presented to Parliament under the native school act 1867, " there should not a word of Maori allowed to be spoken in the school and master and his wife and children should be persons altogether ignorant of the Maori language".
In 1877 Renata Kawepo and 200 others requested, " The government should use every endeavour to have schools established throughout the colony so that Maori children may learn English language".
Sir Aripana Ngata of native affairs campaigned in the 1920 and 1930 to have English given priority in Maori schools. He argued that English was the key to open doors to many callings.
He stated " .Maori parents do not like their children being taught in Maori even in Maori schools, as they argue that their children are sent to school to learn English and the way of English".
Need I say more, Maori should only be voluntary and not compulsory.
In my view it's disrespectful to use Maori names for towns and cities that did not exist prior to European settlement and that were established entirely on models from British and European cultures. If a Maori name had been used for some part or landmark within the area the town or city now exists, by all means keep using it for that, but not for the post-Maori municipality. It's time we honoured the civilization brought by Europeans.
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